The artist as outsider: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

The lonely city is a pervasive phenomenon. The specific city of Olivia Laing’s new essay/memoir of the same name is New York City, but there is something about the modern city – be it the glass towered canyons of the central core or, I would argue, the uniform, ordered expanse of soulless suburbs that breeds a loneliness that can be suffocating. And surely some feel it more acutely than others, but most of us have probably, at least at some time or in some space, been troubled by the longing for contact, the need to share, and the sense that our aching neediness is conspicuous, writ large in awkward desperation. That is the experience Laing sets out to explore, by placing the inward focused isolation of being alone in a foreign city, against the works of a number of artists who, she argues, portray loneliness – capture the sensation, however bleak or beautiful – in a manner that speaks to her, during her sojourn and, in the end, perhaps help her find her way out of her darkness.

Her previous book, The Trip to Echo Spring, also set in America, was a road trip via the lives of five American authors who battled the bottle, framed against her own experiences growing up in an alcoholic household. I read it with an eye to understanding my adult son, a creative young man who is also an alcoholic. In her new work, the terrain she covers is confined, claustrophobic, but again informed by her own experience, this time of a period spent in New York following the emotionally devastating collapse of a relationship. I read The Lonely City in an urban centre less glamorous but with its own tendency to be unfriendly, at the apex, perhaps, of an extended period of crushing loneliness of my own.

Laing begins her journey through urban alienation with the suggestion, inspired by an entry in the diaries of Virginia Woolf, that there can be a transcendent quality to the experience of loneliness. She seeks to find this idea reflected in the lives and creations of a number of artists whose works draw her in and help her articulate and understand her own loneliness, in the moment, and as it exists within in the context of 21st century technology. She asks:

“What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we’re not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people, particularly if we don’t find speaking easy? Is sex a cure for loneliness, and if it is, what happens if our body or sexuality is considered deviant or damaged, if we are ill or unblessed with beauty? And is technology helping with these things? Does it draw us closer together, or trap us behind screens?”

As an essayist, Laing has the ability to balance just the right measure of personal exposition and vulnerability, with an uncanny talent for bringing the lives of the individuals that fascinate her into an immediate, sensitive focus. She writes with an honest compassion and curiosity. New York City – reflected through her months of moving between rented or borrowed accommodations, patrolling the streets with a sense of acute isolation, and digging through the archives of artists in search of meaning and treasure – is exposed and stripped bare through the emotionally disenfranchised creative eye. The eyes she choses to look through include Alfred Hitchcock, Valeries Solanas, Nan Goldin, Klaus Nomi, Peter Hujar, Billie Holiday and Jean-Michel Basquiat; but four artists in particular provide perspectives she finds deeply intriguing. They are the realist painter Edward Hopper whose stark images capture the solitary urban existence with an intensity that is poignant and uncomfortable; Andy Warhol, the socially awkward artist who virtually fabricated an identity protected by silkscreen frames, cameras and tape recorders; the unknown Chicago janitor, Henry Darger, who left an extensive, often disturbing, legacy of folk art and thousand of pages of imaginative prose; and, finally, photographer, artist, writer and activist David Wojnarowicz.

Laing weaves her personal reflections with a survey of some of the essential psychological studies of the causes and expressions of loneliness; expanding on these themes against the broad canvas of the lives and artworks of the artists she examines. Her subjects, the key players and the supporting characters alike, tend to be outsiders, typically survivors of troubled childhoods – victims of neglect, rejection, even outright physical abuse. Many are queer, individuals set apart by their sexuality, most find normal conversational communication difficult, and addiction is a common demon that recurs. The art, film and writings produced by these complex individuals is, in many instances, boundary breaking, frequently disturbing, and contain, at their core an attempt to articulate the aloneness of life in the city, to portray the isolated individual within stark interior spaces (as in the haunting paintings of Edward Hopper) or to record the desolate environments where the dispossessed seek to assuage their alienation through drugs and risky anonymous sexual encounters (as in the work of Warhol, Goldin, Wojnarowicz and others). Then there is the janitor/artist Darger, a loner who created a detailed alternate universe, illustrated with playfully coloured paintings that frequently contained elements of disturbing violence enacted on children, leaving an exhaustive wealth of works that no one saw until he was forced into hospital care at the end of his life.

Each of Laing’s outsider artists is treated with an empathetic respect and is understood within a society that is perceived as antagonistic to the those who by virtue of personality, mental illness, social anxiety, gender expression or sexuality are seen as divergent from the “norm”, whatever that is. The artists who seem to hold the greatest appeal for her, as a memoirist, are those who exploit their own differences to challenge the pressures that perpetuate a mainstream conformity. Regarding Wojnarowicz she says:

“All his work was an act of resistance against this dominating force, driven by a desire to contact and inhabit a deeper, wilder mode of being. The best way he’d found to fight was to make public the truths of his own life, to create work that resisted invisibility and silence; the loneliness that comes from having your existence denied, from being written out of history, which after all belongs to the normal and not to the stigmatised.”

As Laing unwraps the nuances of her own engagement with loneliness she finds in herself a profound identification with the gay artists who were navigating the city’s streets in the years before Stonewall, or even worse, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. As the daughter of a lesbian who was outed when homophobia was still legally enforced in the UK, she was especially sensitive to the gay taunts and jeers she heard in the school yard. But the knife cut deeper in an unexpected way:

“It wasn’t just about my mother. I can see myself then, skinny and pale, dressed as a boy, completely incapable of handling the social demands of being at a girl’s school, my own sexuality and sense of gender hopelessly out of kilter with the options then on offer. If I was anything, I was a gay boy; in the wrong place, in the wrong body, in the wrong life.”

These words struck a deep chord with me. Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, I found myself in the same space, only more completely if you like. I was haunted by an other-worldliness, a complete sense of my lack of ability to understand, let alone communicate, with those with who apparently shared the same gender. This feeling began to escalate as I reached my mid teens. That was, incidentally, a time when I sought a sense of self-identification with the world personified by Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground and other denizens of the Factory scene. I was, without any language for myself, grasping at straws. But I would not find the words, or discover that there was a way to ameliorate the crushing sense that I was in the wrong body until I was well into my 30’s. Many years on now I would like to say that being able to exist in the world in a way that is at once socially and emotional right has rendered loneliness a less pervasive force, but, in truth, it just changes the parameters of one’s alienation. At best, I am a loner who appears outgoing, who can readily speak to a room of 100 people but stumbles awkwardly over small talk; at worst I am floored by waves of intense loneliness that break over me when I least expect it, most often when I am in public places.

I have introduced my own experience here because it leads into the curious question of the role of social media in the 21st century experience of isolation. Laing describes how, during her New York stay, she would open and close the day wandering the virtual streets and alleys of the city of Twitter. In between, even more hours could be lost to clicking, conversing, and cruising hashtags. In my loneliest periods I have fallen into the same pattern and asked myself the same questions she poses:

“What did I want? What was I looking for? What was I doing there, hour after hour? Contradictory things. I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to be stimulated. I wanted to be in contact and I wanted to retain my privacy. I wanted to click and click and click until my synapses exploded, until I was flooded with superfluity.”

The migration of our social engagement to a virtual sphere is, she argues, reflected in the gentrification of our urban communities and in the gentrification of our emotions. Happiness is assumed to be the default; difficult feelings are to be avoided, corrected, numbed. The internet can be a comfort, a necessary connection, but it is important to understand its limitations. It cannot cure loneliness. The answer lies not in another person, but within ones self. After all, a period of loneliness can be positive experience, a time of personal growth. Longing, as Laing reminds us, is a vital part of the human experience, it “does not mean that one has failed, but simply that one is alive.” I am inclined to believe she is right.

16 thoughts on “The artist as outsider: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing”

The answer lies not in another person, but within one’s self – I love that statement. And I also read that people are actually finding it ever harder to cope with loneliness and understand its benefits nowadays, because they always have their smartphones to counteract it. Or is that illusory?

I would think that smartphones increase isolation, people would rather engage with their online life than the person across from them. Its funny, as a introvert I do not tend to use my phone much when I am away from home and have very few apps (I especially wanted one to read books on it when stuck in a line up without a book! My son who suffers from serious social anxiety doesn’t even own a smart phone but my gregarious daughter lives on hers. What really upsets me is parents ignoring their children to bury their heads in their phones. Smartphones provide a false sense of connection in my mind.

I am mocked by my friends and family for using my smartphone only for calling and texting (and alarm in the morning) and my tablet only for reading and checking email when I am out and about. I prefer to be ‘unreachable’ and I consider myself an extrover. I prefer talking to the people I meet.

This review really speaks to me. Loneliness or being alone can be a weird feeling. I remember one weekend when I left work on a Friday and between then and going back to work on the Monday, I didn’t see or speak to another single soul. In a way, I began to wonder if I was real. I especially like you bringing in your own experience, especially your comment that just the parameters of your alienation had changed.

Excellent and very thoughtful post, Joe. I think modern media tools can give us an illusion of contact which actually is false, and can make it harder for us to relate in real life if we let it get too much in the way. Having spent most of my younger years as a bit of a loner myself, struggling to fit in with the social norms expected of a teenage girl (all of which I rejected), I can empathise with Laing, and I think I need to check out her books.

Laing is a wonderful essayist. I read her last book, The Trip to Echo Spring, when it first came out. It is also excellent. It is a road trip/personal essay/exploration of the role of alcohol in the creative lives of Tennessee Williams, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Cheever and Raymond Carver. I highly recommend that one as well.

I’m slightly concerned by the focus on outsider artists, who seem perhaps the glamorous wing of loneliness. Most people suffering from extreme loneliness aren’t though producing interesting art. They’re night shift workers or isolated stay at home parents or elderly people who’re increasingly housebound and have lost their social network. They don’t have such consolations as their art may offer (and some of those she mentions while lonely were nevertheless part of a very active social scene – Warhol was not exactly isolated.

I mention it just because it sounds like in a work on loneliness she may have left out some of those most vulnerable to it. If one grows up gay in a time or place rife with homophobia that is massively isolating, but one may later get to be part of a broader gay community. To be 82 without friends and with failing legs is to have very little to look forward to indeed. When I think lonely, I think elderly, not underground artist.

In all fairness, her intention in this work was to explore loneliness as expressed in the work of artists who would be considered outsiders. She does discuss the role of the stigmatization of the mentally ill, the homeless, the socially awkward and others who do not conform to the norm or make others uncomfortable. I would imagine the underground artist focus was informed by the association of so many of these people with NYC of a pre-internet era. But Edward Hopper and the Chicago janitor (who may well have had a serious mental illness) do not fit that definition were not underground artists. Still these are her idiosyncratic choices and the work is a memoir.

If I have a serious disagreement with her essay it lies in the emphasis on difficult childhoods and neglect as a factor in loneliness. I would argue that a tendency to be lonely is more complex and a factor of temperament and experience (one can have a loving family but be socially excluded at school due to shyness, appearance, poverty, etc). As well, loneliness is not a question of not having others around – that’s why loneliness in a big city can be so acute. I know from experience that the isolation one may feel on the inside can be at odds with the way other people see you.

As for the relation between art and loneliness, I worked for years in mental health and brain injury where loneliness can be endemic, especially where behaviour and lack of social skills complicate the ability to form relationships. Art is an important therapy, but it is also a common solitary past time and the artwork produced can be astounding. So the matter can be very dynamic. And as a side note the broader “gay community” can be a hostile and unfriendly space, older LGBT persons face an especially lonely prospect.

This is a really beautiful review. For me, one thing I am surprised about is how much social media has actually connected me with people I’ve never met: recommendations for books for example and interactions about them. And I have actually met quite a number of flesh and blood people through twitter and they’ve become firm friends. Also, blogs like yours make a real connection. Often, I’m frustrated that I don’t have the time to read the books to which I’m drawn via your blog, for example, (or @timesflow’s, also @booksyo who writes lovely unpredictable personal reactions to books) but reading your words (and their words) on a work is a connection in itself. Man, I wish I had the time to read all the books that you and so many others recommend. Also, at some point in life, to find oneself occupying the same time and space in the flesh… who knows?

Thank you for the compliment. I agree about the value of social media to create a sense of connectedness. It is, of course a tool that has to be managed properly, but there is so much interesting to read and discuss with like minded people. In the year that I have been seriously blogging about books I have *met* fellow readers, writers, publishers, editors, translators. On occasion I have had an opportunity to meet some of these people face to face and it has always been positive. I find it so exciting to be part of the discussion about intelligent books and ideas and generally this is something long lacking in my own life. Sometimes I feel quite desperate for a really solid conversation about books/ideas. And to connect with people around the world is a bonus. (And @timesflow and @booksyo are likewise two sites that have been to blame for many acquisitions on my shelves!)

I’m in complete agreement with you about Laing’s ability to blend her own experience with that of her subjects’ without descending into a mawkish confessional. It’s an extraordinarily personal book in many ways yet erudite and illuminating. I see we both chose to finish our reviews with the same quote – I found it very comforting after what was at times a painful read. I hope you found that it helped you through your own loneliness.